Bank Street Approach

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Bank Street Approach

• Lucy Sprague Mitchell

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In 1918

• Children were seen and not heard ?
• All schooling was teacher directed ?
• Teaching was drilling ?
• Preschool education had not been researched ?
• And then along came LUCY ?!!!

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LUCY SPRAGUE MITCHELL

• The first Dean of Women at UC/Berkley.
• A friend and admirer of John Dewey.
• Dedicated to developing a new kind of education
  that would help build a more rational, humane
  world.
• Teamed with Carol Pratt, Harriet Johnson, and
  Elizabeth Irwin to change thinking about how
  children learn.

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Bureau of Education Experiments

• Began in 1916 by L.S. Mitchell with a grant given
  to her by her cousin
• Staffed by a physician, social workers, teachers
• Its objective was to study children in as free
  an atmosphere as possible!
• A Nursery School was opened in 1918.
• WOW!!!

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HOW WAS BANK STREET DIFFERENT?

• Free expression in clay, paint and drawing was
  encouraged.
• Field trips to interesting places around the
  city, such as the zoo or a bridge.
• Children were encouraged to inquire about their
  world.
• The language of children was studied.
• Teachers were constantly reassessing and self
  reflecting to improve their pedagogy.

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LIVELY INTELLECTUAL CURIOSITIES TURN THE WORLD
INTO AN EXCITING LABORATORY AND KEEPS ONE EVER A
LEARNER.

• L.S.MITCHELL

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BANK STREET BOOKS

• Mrs. Mitchell studied childrens language for
  many years. She published her first book Here
  and Now in 1921 and it became an all-time best
  seller. This led her to develop the Bank Street
  Writers Laboratory in 1937 to do the work of
  writing for and about children. This was the
  first step in the Bureaus effort to improve the
  quality of childrens literature and that
  effort continues today! For example

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Books, continued

• Little Golden Books, affordable/ marketed to mass
  market/children feel ownership.
• Bank Street Readers- multi ethnic urban basal
  readers first published in 1965 and 1966. It was
  the first of its kind and entered the schools
  dominated by Dick and Jane.
• Preprimer readers- In the City and People Read.
• Bank Street Writers Laboratory-developing writers
  such as Margaret Wise Brown (Goodnight Moon) and
  Maurice Sendak (Where the Wild Things Are)

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69 Bank Street became a place of metamorphosis in
early childhood education.

• Lucy Sprague Mitchell was a visionary who sought
  to improve the education of children and thus
  their teachers through research about early
  development and cognition. In so doing, she
  sought to improve the human condition and society
  as a whole.

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• I LUCY!
• AND BANK STREET!

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End notes.

• I attended nursery school in 1959-60 in NYC
  almost certainly modeled on Bank Street Approach.
  This is what piqued my interest in this model. In
  addition, the impact that Bank Street has had on
  education and early childhood learning as a
  whole, teaching us as educators to WATCH children
  and to LEARN from children impresses me greatly.
  Bank Street continues to be a laboratory for
  teachers, now serving as a college and graduate
  school for educators. It is an excellent resource
  for continuing education. Teachers from all over
  the world continue to flock to its present
  headquarters to learn the latest and finest in
  pedagogy.
• For more information go to www.bankstreet.edu